Regarded as the very first teleserye, the soap opera was a love story of two generations. The first one was played out between Valdez (Amor) and Gutierrez (Eduardo Buenavista). Amor was the country lass who worked as helper in the Buenavista Mansion and Hacienda. Eduardo and Amor fell for each other, much to the dismay of the Buenavista Matriarch Doña Benita (Lorena). With Eduardo’s brother Diego (Alarcon), Doña Benita plotted to besmear Macaspac’s purity in the eyes of Eduardo, and they succeeded. Macaspac was banished from the debt-ridden hacienda, and later on discovered that she was pregnant. She gave birth to a girl she named Maria Amor. Out of the need to save the hacienda, Eduardo married Claudia (Garcia), the daughter of another rich landowner. Claudia however was involved with another man, her first love. Before the wedding, she was already pregnant, and Eduardo was not aware of it. Claudia’s son, Angelo, would grow up considering Eduardo as his father.

Meanwhile, Amor’s heart was only filled with vengeance as she continued to make a living for her daughter. She ended up dancing in a girly bar where she met Mr. Powers, a black American businessman, who brought her to the United States. Amor was forced to leave Maria Amor behind with her mother, who lived in a dumpster. A pivotal event of the teleserye was the caving in of the dumpster one rainy night, and the eventual death of Amor’s mother, alluding to a controversial similar tragic event in a Quezon City dumpsite. Maria Amor survived the tragedy and was found by a couple. She was renamed Inamorata. Amor on the other hand suffered from being maltreated by her husband, who was unfortunately getting sick. She never had the chance to go back to the Philippines after hearing about the dumpster tragedy. When the husband was totally helpless, Amor transformed into her scheming self and made him sign a last will and testament that transferred all his properties to her. Upon his death, Amor returned to the Philippines to seek revenge.

By stroke of luck, Inamorata (or Ina) grew up as a fine young girl, and curiously found herself working at the Buenavista Hacienda—a fate she shared with her mother. As in the previous generation, she developed a romantic relationship with the son of the master, Angelo, and their love proved to be another that had to be prevented because of their social positions. Complicating the plot was the return of Amor, who simply wanted to get back at Eduardo, and to avenge her daughter’s “death”. She figured in several showdowns with “Madame” Claudia, who became her bitter rival in business, as well as in local politics, where Eduardo eventually embarked, when he ran for provincial governor. The story at this point revolved around Angelo’s pursuit of Ina, the love triangle among Amor, Claudia, and Eduardo, and the revelations about the past of both Ina and Angelo. The conflicts were resolved towards the end of the story, and Ina and Angelo got married. With reports from Erika Bianca G. Paras